Three mystery 'aurora' models appear in OpenAI's API — unannounced, unexplained

Three unannounced model identifiers — aurora-red-alpha, aurora-green-alpha and aurora-blue-alpha — appeared in OpenAI's developer API on October 18, first flagged by researchers posting on X. Crypto Briefing reported the listings the same morning, noting there was no announcement, no changelog entry, no public pricing and no stated use case for any of the three models.

OpenAI has not documented or explained the aurora models, and later community testing linked the names to image generation in blind arena tests, with testers reporting red as faster and lower quality and green as slower and better. That identification remains unconfirmed, reports conflict on whether the identifiers were quickly removed from the API, and OpenAI has said nothing publicly about them.